Punk's not dead it just deserves to die...

My relationship with punk has been a complicated one. I was introduced to the genre in 1980 or 1981. I was 8 or 9.

I was really into KISS, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, Queen and the other hard rock legends of the time... and I couldn't stop listening to The Devil Went Down to Georgia much to my brother's chagrin. It was around this time that I was introduced to The Police, Rush, The Cars, The Scorpions, Judas Priest, Van Halen, and a bunch of other late 70s, early 80s rock stuff. KISS jumped the shark with Dynasty, so I needed some new heroes. Ok, Zep, they'll do nicely.

One Sunday, my brother had some friends over. We had this brand new thing called a VCR that your could put VHS tapes into and watch movies! MAGIC! One of Eric's friends had a VHS copy of "Rock and Roll High School", a terrible film named after the Ramones song of the same name.

It's a terrible movie that I love to pieces for purely nostalgic reasons. This is where I heard the Ramones for the first time, my first exposure to punk and the complicated development of my relationship to it.

Who were these leather jacket clad, bowl cut wearing dudes from Queens playing music that, at the time, sounded like a chainsaw tearing apart a cute, fuzzy creature? For the most part, The Ramones library, with few exceptions, is perfectly pleasant music by today's standards, but back then... it was really out there!

I loved it! Loud. Obnoxious. Fast. Aggressive, but it sounded like music I would be able to perform! Even at the age of 9!

I was taking piano lessons at the time and there's not much room for piano in a punk band in 1981, so I'd have to learn... who am I kidding? I hated piano lessons and quit very quickly. I wish I hadn't, but I was swimming 5 days a week, going to swim meets on the weekends, and constantly studying. There just wasn't time and it was the thing that was easiest to give up.

Our neighbors had two kids my age, Chris and Mike. Chris was the same age as me. We were hiking buddies. We got muddy together stomping through streams all through the Los Gatos foothills. Mike was 2 years older and a part-time skate punk. He liked to torture Chris and me, because, well, he was kind of a dick.

However!

He was really into punk rock. He listened to The Ramones, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Dead Kennedys, The Misfits and on and on. Mike was the one who really introduced me to the genre as well as some of the local skate punk bands like The Faction and JFA.

Fun fact, The Faction guitarist, Adam "Bomb" Segal would be a flatmate of mine my first year at UC Santa Cruz! It really tripped him out that I even knew who he was!

With Mike's introduction to the genre, I would mow a bunch of lawns and clean a bunch of gutters to buy myself a bunch of the punk Classics. Rocket to Russia, Never Mind the Bollocks, Plastic Surgery Disasters, Combat Rock, etc. In 1983, metal took over my musical tastes, so doing a deeper dive into punk would have to wait a little while.

Now, this is the early 80s. Punks and metalheads don't mix except in their shared hatred of hippies. Oil and water.

The thrash metal movement of the mid-80s would change all that. Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer, Exodus, Death Angel, and on and on were all massively influenced by punk and hardcore. I was also introduced to Motorhead around this time. Motorhead was unique because they didn't fit into any of the neat little boxes by which we worked really hard to categorize bands. They weren't straight rock, they weren't metal, they weren't punk, but they had a sound that attracted a lot of people from this particular branch of the musical spectrum. They weren't a punk band, but they were punk as fuck!

In 1986, I met Brendan. Holy shit, I've known Brendan for 33 years now! Very early on in our friendship, in a single night, he introduced me to The Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Fear, and The Dead Milkmen along with an impressive list of non punk bands that quickly became some lifelong favorites. FISHBONE IS RED HOT!

Brendan wasn't big into metal like I was. There were some bands he enjoyed, but his tasted decidedly strayed toward the punk and hardcore side of the fence. This was great because it introduced me to a bunch of music that I might not have found on my own because of my predilection toward metal, prog and classic rock.

As a full blown teenager, the sound of punk and hardcore spoke to me. Though, much like with metal... I didn't care for the fans so much.

But the music! It was angry, rebellious. Aggressive... and at times, strangely melodic. I started digging more deeply into my interest in punk and hardcore. Began looking beyond the classic albums and bands. I found or was introduced to Bad Brains, X, Black Flag, Fugazi, JFA, The Faction, Operation Ivy, Agent Orange, Fear, Samhain, Sonic Youth, Fugazi, Minor Threat, The Cro-mags, 7 Seconds... the list goes on.

What really drove this though was the release of Metallica's "$5.98 EP" which had incredible covers of Killing Joke's "The Wait", and The Misfit's "Last Caress" and "Green Hell". It drove my interest in punk and hardcore into overdrive. AND! I was old enough to go to shows at this point. Most punk shows were in 18+ or 21+ venues, so I didn't get to see many until 1989-1990.

I can't say I ever really saw a true punk rock show. By the time I was going to punk shows, the crossover had happened on several fronts. The shows were crowded with metalheads, punks, some glam rockers and the occasional way out of place hippy. The shows were always crazy! I went to a 7 Seconds show at The Stone when I was 17. The Mentors opened. Only time I've ever seen someone smoke crack on stage or a drum set beaten with giant dildos. It was an interesting scene for sure! Probably the most legitimately punk rock thing I'd ever seen.

I finally got to see The Ramones in 1989 at The Greek Theater in Berkeley. 75 minutes and probably 450 songs.

ONE TWO THREE FOUR! SONIC ASSAULT!

It was glorious!

Still, after having seen a fair number of punk and hardcore shows, including a young band called Green Day at Gilman Street in Berkeley, I would never really feel at home in the punk world. I liked the music. I liked the attitude that inspired the music, but I just generally didn't like the actual punks. They weren't people I could talk about Monty Python, Douglas Adams, Tolkien, or heaven forbid, Rush with.

I appreciated the antagonism toward authority, the driving compulsion toward non-conformity, the fuck you attitude. At a certain point though, it seemed comical, forced; much like the metal community in many ways. The drive to not conform became a form of conformity. Sometimes the anger felt unfocused, angry for the sake of appearing angry, rather than heartfelt rage at an unjust system.

In 1991, everything changed though. Nirvana became the biggest thing in the world. Punk was on everybody's lips. Mudhoney made a small splash, but they deserved more recognition than they ever received.

The very idea of what was punk was becoming muddied because of Nirvana and grunge's popularity. The old school punks were all growing up, many of them becoming responsible middle class adults... the thing they hated with such venom in the 70s and 80s. Teenagers were claiming to be "into punk" because they loved Green Day and Nirvana.

Nirvana and Green Day didn't really write punk music at this point. Sure, they were deeply influenced by it and that was reflected in their music. Their shows showed some semblance, shadows really, of what a punk or hardcore show was like, but it just wasn't the same.

After Nirvana and Green Day, punk had been sanitized. Made radio friendly and stylish for suburban teenagers who could afford to make fashion statements.

Now! Don't get me wrong, I fucking love Nirvana! They're still regular rotation music for me! And Green Day? Green Day is perfectly pleasant music. I enjoy it, but don't go out of my way to listen to them anymore.

Through the 90s, punk became way more of a fashion statement than anything else. The rebellion, the anti-authoritarian, the "fuck you" attitude diminished. "Punk rock" became a catch-all adjective for anything that was slightly outside of societal norms. Sometimes grossly misused to create mystique or drama for something that celebrated tradition or conformity. "We do it the traditional way! The punk rock way!" I really have a hard time thinking of something more contradictory.

What used to be a "DIY, yes you can do it, fuck traditional norms and authority" attitude that was manifest in a rather broad genre of music had become a branding statement. "Drink our beer! It's punk AF! All the punks love it!"

"Dude! He drank 8 beers and then took 4 shots of tequila! He's so punk rock!"

"That Hello Kitty tattoo is so punk! I love it!"

I was never "punk rock". I was always an outsider to the scene who was allowed to peak inside as long as I didn't make a fuss. I respected and admired the attitude, the work ethic, the music!

For all intents and purposes, other than going to Nomeansno, Motorhead, or Melvins shows from about 1993 on... I don't really go to punk shows anymore. I'm sure true punk scenes still exist in this modern world where hungry young musicians are working their asses off to write songs and rage against the system, I'm just too set in my ways to venture out on a Tuesday night to a dingy club to take a chance on a new band that might sound like Black Flag at best, but more likely will sound like Blink 182... and that would just make me sad.

"Punk's not dead. It just deserves to die when it becomes another stale cartoon."